China Blog: Day 85

16:53 Beijing Time

Phrase Of The Day: De bing ho…. Zhongweh “Illiterate” zenme shuo? (Of ice and…what’s that word for “illiterate?”)

It’s bloody cold.

BLOODY cold.

As in, -8 degrees. I’ve never felt things this cold. For example, let me tell you a little story.

During this tale, I would like to remind you that I am from warm, temperate Somerset, where a temperature of -1 is considered an extreme of temperature. Even in Sunderland, it was always bearable.

Fiona and myself decided to take an early-morning stroll through Nanhu park on Sunday, after an abortive attempt to visit the South Lake Hotel for a buffet western breakfast. It was cold- I was even wearing GLOVES, which is something I’ve not done since my time in the TA. As we got to the lake, I noticed something odd. A rock was floating *on* the lake.

Not *in*. *on*. This confounded me somewhat, so I placed a foot on the water. It was hard. I placed a second foot on, and it cracked. So much so that I stepped back onto shore, but for one special, brief second, I was standing ON the lake.

Now, country bumpkin I may be, but if there’s one thing that I know, I know that lakes are NOT things to be stood on. One does not STAND on lakes. In fact, one of the things that makes a lake a lake, one of it’s defining qualities, is that the damn thing is completely un-stand-onnable.

Yes folks, for the first time in my life – fairly seasoned traveller that I am – I was looking at a frozen lake. And it was magical.

For some reason, me, Josh and Tom were having a deep, philosophical conversation the other day about how we are surviving in China. At some point, I turned round and said “You know what’s the hardest? The fact that I feel like I’m illiterate.”

This elicited a moment of pensive silence, followed by agreement.

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve wondered what it would be like to not be able to read, or to write. I mean, I come from a country with a 99% literacy rate. I don’t think I’ve ever MET an illiterate British person. Then I came out here, and I know exactly what it’s like.

When I was 14, I made a joke about illiteracy that I’ve always felt bad for. One of those multitude of guilty little feelings that have never really gone away. The ones that niggle at you and make sure you never make that mistake twice, y’know? Well, trust me. I will never joke about it again, now that I know what it’s like. Back home, we take reading and writing for granted. Here, I see these random squiggles on the wall, and it infuriates me. It infuriates me because I know they mean something, but I can never know what that something is. I know that somewhere sells food, but darned if I know what type of food they sell. Or I see a building, and I don’t know if it’s a cafe, a brothel or a music shop.

It makes you realise just how good we have it back home.

Anyways, I’m out. Got some things to do. I’m going to try and break the cycle of once-a-week-posting that I appear to have slipped into ^_^

Zai Jian, guys!

China Blog: Day 78

21:21 Beijing Time

Phrase Of The Day: Wo de shengming nar? (Where has my life gone?)

I’m serious. Where the hell has my life gone of late? It seems I have no time to spare on such endeavours as writing my dearly beloved blog. While I was at University, I would do *things* most nights of the week. Mondays I’d roleplay. Tuesdays I’d fence. Wednesdays I’d fence or be at Fitzies. Thuirsdays I’d be out doing something or other. Fridays were my only weeknight when I was in the flat, and then  was normally watching TV with Rob or playing video games.

But here, I find I spend all that precious evening time marking, writing exams, grading students, or just generally working.

Damn this adult lifestyle!!!!

Seriously, sometimes I wish I would wake up and be back in my bed in Sunderland, still a student and without a care in the world.

You know how Peter Pan never wanted to grow up? That’s how I feel right now. Me and Fio were having a conversation a few days back about how all the expats here were running away from something, and my something was the whole “Becoming a responsible adult” thing. The annoying thing is, it looks like it’s catching me up. Gone are the days when I would burrn the candle at both ends- now my idea of a wild night out is a visit to a teahouse to mark work till midnight.

Curse you, adulthood.

Okay, enough ranting.At least I still have more hair than any other male in my family.

I had something quite intriguing brought to my attention on RPG.net earlier- New York Plans To Make Gender Personal Choice. I found this quite entertaining, actually. It certainly holds a lot of promise and hey- it doesn’t affect me physically or financially, so good for New York! It’ll certainly make the lives of a few folk I know a bit easier. What surprises me is that allegedly a few states have already allowed this. This I was unaware of.

And no, I’ll not be changing my gender any time soon. I just like to see a bit of liberalism winning out for a change. What does scare me is the following response from one of the female members:

“Interesting. Right now I can’t see any harm, but I’ll have to think on it more.
Is it wrong that my first thought was that otherkin will now demand that species be open to choice as well?”

Oh Lord.

If you don’t know what Otherkin, or “Furries” are, then you may not get this, and you are one of the lucky ones. For those of you who do, then maybe you will share my bemusement at the implications of this statement. I’m not sure if I should agree, or shudder in horror. I mean, sure, it’s freedom of expression and all that, which is good. But saying you’re a different SPECIES to the one you were at birth? Still, at the end of the day, it’s their lives, I s’pose. Not my place to make a judgement.

Still kinda weirds me out though.

*shudder*

Sooooo, moving swiftly on.

Since the Great Halloween Hard Drive Crash, a whole lot has happened here. My D&D game got started, for one thing. And I managed to convince Fiona, who once told me “There’s no WAY I’ll ever play D&D. I’m too cool for it, and my cred will plummet” to play. Needless to say, I’m pretty sure she enjoyed it, but just doesn’t want to admit it

However, now I have to fulfill my part of the bargain. See, we agreed that if she played D&D, I had to let her give me a face mask and a facial.

Aye me. What have I let myself in for?!?!?!?

Also, I ended up going to a Latin and Salsa (the dance, not the dip) night at Bar 6-0 on Saturday, which was intriguing, to say the least. You all know how, when I was younger, I never used to be able to dance?

Well, I still can’t. Seriously. I still look like the arthritic hippo on roller skates I so resembled as a gawky, awkward teenager. Dance moves do NOT come with age.

This was, of course, AFTER I had spent all day tromping around Guilin Lu and Hongxin Jie in the rain, in just a Bristol Rugby shirt, after I left my keys at Wes’s apartyment after our D&D game on the Friday. It’s a good job I could crash at Fi’s, or I’d have spent the whole night sleeping at YuanYuanYuan.

That’s one thing I have noticed here. It’s very common for people to just…sort of….sleep. Anywhere and everywhere. The Chinese sleep a LOT. In class. In restaurants. Anywhere. It isn’t uncommon for Chinese folk to find an all-night restaurant or bath-house and just sleep there, if they can’t make it home. It’s something I’ll probably do a lot of when I’m on the road in January. Back home it just wouldn’t happen- you’d be thrown out on your ear without so much as a by-your-leave if you decided to curll up in a ball and kip the night at the local chippy.

God I love this country.

And so we arrive at this week. The start of exam season, and with it a boatload of work that could probably sink the Queen Mary.

Hence my inability to write. Actually, I’m going to sign off here, having had to give a lecture on both the British Press and sport today. I shouldn’t be tired, as I spent the night in Fiona’s Bed Of Uber Comfiness (The one place in Changchun I can get more than 6 hours sleep at a stretch)

So as I say goodnight, I wish to leave you with this piece of blasphemy. Bond in a Mondeo???? NEVER! However, I do love the quote where he says: 

“It may be a shock to see someone as cool as James Bond driving something as practical as a Ford Mondeo,
but for all those wannabe Bonds out there the change away from the typical Aston
Martins is good news.

“The more expensive your car the higher your insurance costs so the Ford
Mondeo will therefore make a substantial difference to your bank account,
typically around a third of the annual cost of insuring an Aston Martin. That’s
a lot of vodka martinis.”

Nice to see that even the journalists from the Press Association rip their news straight from press releases. It means that all the time during my first year at the Sunderland Echo, when that was the majority of my work, I wasn’t the only one doing it. I wonder if the journo who wrote that felt like as much of a corporate whore as I did every time I had to pass off an article ripped off of a poorly-written, shamelessly-self-promoting press release. I also wonder if, like me, they did their best to leave out the name of the company who sent the press release, or their industry. Doesn’t look much like it to me.

Ahh, anyways. All of today’s journo-talk has made me nostalgic, so I’ma going to go and have a whiskey then go to bed.

Zai Jian, guys!